A Life's Secret Part 27

Oh, you do, some of you? then I'll tell those that don't. From twelve to fifteen s.h.i.+llings per day: and even more than that. _Twelve s.h.i.+llings!_ and that's the minimum rate of pay,' slowly repeated Sam, lifting up his arm and one peg-top to give emphasis to the words.

A murmur of envy at the coveted rate of pay in Australia shook the room to the centre.

'But the price of provisions and other necessaries is enormous in that quarter,' debated Abel White. 'So it may come to the same in the end--be about as broad as long. Old father and me was talking about it last night.'

'If everybody went in for your old father's sentiments, we should soon be like him--in our dotage,' loftily observed Sam.

'But things are dear there,' persisted Sam's antagonist. 'I have heard what is sometimes given for shoes there; but I'm afraid to say, it was so much. The wages in Australia can't be any guide for us.'

'No, they can't,' said Peter Quale. 'Australia is one place, and this is another. Where's the use of bringing up that?'

'Oh, of course not,' sarcastically uttered Sam. 'Anything that tends to show how we are put upon, and how we might be made more comfortable, it's of no use bringing up. The long and the short of it is this: we want to be regarded as MEN: to have our voices considered, and our plaints attended to; to be put altogether upon a better footing. Little enough is it we ask at present: only for a modic.u.m of ease in our day's hard labour, just the thin end of the wedge inserted to give it. That's all we are agitating for. It depends upon ourselves whether we get it or not. Let us display manly courage and join the strike, and it is ours to-morrow.'

The response did not come so quickly as Sam deemed it ought. He went on in a persuasive, ringing tone.

'Consider the wives of your bosoms; consider your little children; consider yourselves. Were you born into the world to be slaves--blackymoors; to be ground into the dust with toil? Never.'

'Never,' uproariously echoed three parts of the room.

'The motto of a true man is, or ought to be, "Do as little as you can, and get as much for it;"' said Sam, dancing in his enthusiasm, and thereby nearly losing his perch on the tub. 'With an hour's work less a day, and the afternoon holiday on the Sat.u.r.day, we shall----'

'What's the good of a afternoon Sat.u.r.day holiday? We don't want that, Sam Shuck.'

This ignominious interruption to the proceedings came from a lady.

Buzzing round the entrance door and thrusting in their heads at a square hole, which might originally have been intended for a window were a dozen or two of the gentler s.e.x. This irregularity had not been un.o.bserved by the chairman, who faced them: the chairman's audience, densely packed, had their backs that way. It was not an orthodox adjunct to a trade meeting, that was certain, and the chairman would probably have ordered the ladies away, had he deemed there was a chance of his getting obeyed; but too many of them had the reputation of being the grey mares. So he winked at the irregularity, and had added one or two flourishes of oratory for their especial ears. The interruption came from Mrs. Cheek, Timothy Cheek's wife.

'What's the good of a afternoon Sat.u.r.day holiday? We don't want that, Sam Shuck. Just when we be up to our eyes in muck and cleaning, our places routed out till you can't see the colour of the boards, for brooms, and pails, and soap and water, and the chairs and things is all topsy-turvy, one upon another, so as the children have to be sent out to grub in the gutter, for there ain't no place for 'em indoors, do you think we want the men poking their noses in? No; and they'd better not try it on. Women have got tempers given to 'em as well as you.'

'And tongues too,' rejoined Sam, unmindful of the dignity of his office.

'It is to be hoped they have,' retorted Mrs. Cheek, not inclined to be put down; and her sentiments appeared to be warmly joined in by the ladies generally. 'Don't you men go a agitating for the Sat.u.r.day's half-holiday! What 'ud you do with it, do you suppose? Why, just sot it away at the publics.'

Some confusion ensued; and the women were peremptorily ordered to mind their own business, and 'make theirselves scarce,' which not one of them attempted to obey. When the commotion had subsided, a very respectable man took up the discourse--George Stevens.

'The gist of the whole question is this,' he said: 'Will agitation do us good, or will it do us harm? We look upon ourselves as representing one interest; the masters consider they represent another. If it comes to open warfare between the two, the strongest would win.'

'In other words, whichever side's funds held out the longest,' said Robert Darby. 'That is as I look upon it.'

'Just so,' returned Stevens. 'I cannot say, seeing no farther than we can see at present, that a strike would be advisable.'

'Stevens, do you want to better yourself, or not?' asked Sam Shuck.

'I'd be glad enough to better myself, if I saw my way clear to do it,'

was the reply. 'But I don't.'

'We don't want no strikes,' struck in a shock-headed hard-working man.

'What is it we want to strike for? We have got plenty of work, and full wages. A strike won't fill our pockets. Them may vote for strikes that like 'em; I'll keep to my work.'

Partial applause.

'It is as I said,' cried Sam. 'There's poor, mean-spirited creatures among you, as won't risk the loss of a day's pay for the common good, or put out a hand to help the less fortunate. I'd rather be buried alive, five feet under the earth, than I'd show cat so selfish.'

'What is the interest of one of us is the interest of all,' observed Stevens. 'And a strike, if we went into it, would either benefit us all in the end, or make us all suffer. It is sheer nonsense to attempt to make out that one man's interest is different from another's; our interests are the same. I'd vote for striking to-morrow, if I were sure we should come out of it with whole skins, and get what we struck for: but I must see that a bit clearer first.'

'How can we get it, unless we try for it?' demanded Sam. 'If the masters find we're all determined, they'll give in to us. I appeal to you all'--raising his hands over the room--'whether the masters can do without us?'

'That has got to be seen,' said Peter Quale, significantly. 'One thing is plain: we could not do without them.'

'Nor they without us--nor they without us,' struck in voices from various parts of the barn.

'Then why s.h.i.+lly-shally about the question of a strike?' asked Sam of the barn, in a glib tone of reason. 'If a universal strike were on, the masters would pretty soon make terms that would end it. Why, a six months' strike would drive half of them into the _Gazette_----'

'But it might drive us into the workhouse at the same time,' interrupted John Baxendale.

'Let me finish,' went on Sam; 'it's not perlite to take up a man in the middle of a sentence. I say that a six months' strike would send many of the masters to the bankruptcy court. Well now, there has been a question debated among us'--Sam lowered his voice--'whether it would not be policy to let things go on quietly, as they are, till next spring----'

'A question among who?' interposed Peter Quale, regardless of the reproof just administered to John Baxendale.

'Never you mind who,' returned Sam, with a wink: 'among those that are hard at work for your interest. With their contracts for the season signed, and their works in full progress, say about next May, then would be the time for a strike to tell upon the masters. However, it has been thought better not to delay it. The future's but an uncertainty: the present is ours, and so must the strike be. _Have_ you wives?' he pathetically continued; '_have_ you children? _have_ you spirits of your own? Then you will all, with one accord, go in for the strike.'

'But what are our wives and children to do while the strike is on?'

asked Robert Darby. 'You say yourself it might last six months, Shuck.

Who would support them?'

'Who!' rejoined Sam, with an indignant air, as if the question were a superfluous one. 'Why the Trades' Unions, of course. _That's_ all settled. The Unions are prepared to take care of all who are out on strike, standing up, like brave Britons, for their privileges, and keep 'em like fighting-c.o.c.ks. Hooroar for that blessed boon, the Trades'

Unions!'

'Hooroar for the Trades' Unions!' was shouted in chorus. 'Keep us like fighting-c.o.c.ks, will they! Hooroar!'

'Much good you'll get from the Trades' Unions!' burst forth a dissentient voice. 'They are the greatest pests as ever was allowed in a free country.'

The opposition caused no little commotion. Standing by the door, having pushed his way through the surrounding women, who had _not_ made themselves 'scarce,' was a man in a flannel jacket, a cap in his hand, and his head white with mortar. He was looking excited as he spoke.

'This is not regular,' said Sam Shuck, displaying authority. 'You have no business here: you don't belong to us.'

'Regular or irregular, I'll speak my mind,' was the answer. 'I have been at work for Jones the builder, down yonder. I have done my work steady and proper, and I have had my pay. A man comes up to me yesterday and says, "You must join the Trades' Union." "No," says I, "I shan't; I don't want nothing of the Trades' Union, and the Union don't want nothing of me." So they goes to my master. "If you keep on employing this man, your other men will strike," they says to him; and he, being in a small way, got intimidated, and sent me off to-day. And here I am, throwed out of work, and I have got a sick wife and nine young children to keep. Is that justice? or is it tyranny? Talk about emanc.i.p.ating the slaves! let us emanc.i.p.ate ourselves at home.'

'Why don't you join the Union?' cried Sam. 'All do, who are good men and true.'

'All good men and true _don't_,' dissented the man. 'Many of the best workmen among us won't have anything to do with Unions; and you know it, Sam Shuck.'

'Just clear out of this,' said Sam.

'When I've had my say,' returned the man, 'not before. If I would join the Union, I can't. To join it, I must pay five s.h.i.+llings, and I have not got them to pay. With such a family as mine, you may guess every s.h.i.+lling is forestalled afore it comes in. I kept myself to myself, doing my work in quiet, and interfering with n.o.body. Why should they interfere with me?'

'If you have been in full work, five s.h.i.+llings is not much to pay to the Union,' sneered Sam.

'If I had my pockets filled with five-s.h.i.+lling pieces, I would not pay one to it,' fearlessly retorted the man. 'Is it right that a free-born Englishman should give in to such a system of intimidation? No: I never will. You talk of the masters being tyrants: it's you who are the tyrants, one to another. What is one workman better than his fellow, that he should lay down laws and say, You shall do this, and you shall do that, or you shan't be allowed to work at all? That rule you want to get pa.s.sed--that a skilled, thorough workman shouldn't do a full day's work because some of his fellows can't--who's agitating for it? Why, naturally those that can't or won't do the full work. Would an honest, capable man go in for it? Of course he'd not. I tell you what'--turning his eyes on the room--'the Trades' Unions have been called a protection to the working man; but, if you don't take care, they'll grow into a curse. When Sam Shuck, and other good-for-naughts like him, what never did a full week's work for their families yet, are paid in gold and silver to spread incendiarism among you, it's time you looked to yourselves.'